The difference between SE tokens and SMT's explained in a simple video.

I often read questions about the difference between SMT's and Steem Engine tokens and why we need both.

I made a simple video (in my own way) explaining the difference as best I could.

I am a terrible drawer but I did my best.

Best watched at 1.75x

https://youtu.be/NLt1MKMnwlI

Conclusion.

The main difference is that SE tokens are on a sidechain and SMT's will be on the Steem mainchain when they come out.

That is a huge difference.

The beautiful thing of a sidechain compared to the mainchain is that updates (hard forks) to the sidechain can be quickly implemented because there is no need for consensus to implement hard forks to make changes.

This results in a very speedy update process for the sidechain but the downside is because there are no witnesses (yet) watching over the hard forks and the code anything can be put into the code and be implemented.

If you want to update (hard fork) anything on the mainchain you have to have the consensus of at least 17 of the top 20 witnesses. They secure the chain and the code but it obviously takes a lot more time to implement changes because of this.

So the difference between SE tokens and SMT's is that anything related to Steem-Engine can be updated really fast but it's less secure than SMT's but updating anything related to SMT's will be a lot slower.

I think there is 100% room for both on Steem depending on the needs of the project/community.

Comments

Very interesting. It is definitely going to be cool to see how and if they manage to exist side by side with each other. I think the last thing we need is a new flood of useless tokens. I have so many in my wallet and I don't even know what half of them are. It isn't worth getting rid of them because they have hardly any value!

Steem Engine is currently not a side-chain, as it fully depends on Steem for transactions to be recorded. It is currently more like a child-chain of Steem, like the ones on Ardor.

Ardor is a blockchain. It is a simplified version of Nxt. Most of the features from Nxt where implemented in the Ignis project, instead, which was their first child-chain. A transaction on the Ignis chain is not directly recorded into the Ardor chain, leaving Ignis enough space to change what a valid transaction is, as long as there where nodes which bundle these transactions into an Ardor block. Ardor chain recognizes those transactions as being from a child-chain.

That's the way Steem Engine works. User's transactions are recorded into the Steem blockchain, coming from the steemian account or from other accounts -like "market" one-, creating the illusion that there were blocks on the Steem Engine chain AND blocks on the Steem chain, while there are no blocks on the Steem Engine one.

Steem Engine is not a sidechain, no matter how you define a sidechain.

They are showing virtual blocks on one chain which are useless as they are just showing only transactions interesting to the Steem Engine project in that way. They don't need all of that. Filtering blocks on the Steem blockchain which include Steem Engine transactions will do the same.

Dear @exyle
Thank you for this explanation of the difference between SMT Tokens and SE Tokens. I write a lot about the Steem blockchain and why I am bullish on Steem, so it is great to understand this difference. Your explanation was concise, yet clear and I thought your drawings were good. Plus using that program to incorporate a visual element worked really well to hold my attention on the point being discussed, while also giving a physical representation of digital or virtual constructs. I think our brains can conceive virtual constructs, but we understand them better with visual representations. I hope I am making myself clear.
Peace and good health to you and your wife.
@shortsegments